Avoiding the Lean Cuisine
I have a lot of bad eating habits at work. We have vending machines, my boss has a pretzel jar outside his office, people bring in fat-laced treats like kringle on a pretty regular basis. The worst, however, is usually lunch time. I’m definitely not a morning person, so if I don’t make my lunch the night before, I almost always end up grabbing a can of soup or a frozen meal like Lean Cuisine or Smart Ones to eat for lunch. I am not proud of this, but with a yogurt or piece of fruit, it does the job.
One thing I’m always on the lookout for, though, are easy recipes I can take to work for lunch, preferably several lunches. I love to make lettuce salads for myself, but those are the kind of thing that can’t be made too far in advance of eating them, so I usually do them the night before or not at all. When I saw this recipe for Indian-spiced chickpea salad, though, I was convinced it was the perfect type of recipe to hold up for a few days and provide me with non-frozen lunches.
Nom nom cilantro
And, I believe I was correct. I made the recipe on a Monday, I think, and it provided me with at least three work lunches with very little degradation in flavor or texture — the fresh cilantro was slightly less crisp on the last day, but that was about it. As usual, I didn’t have every ingredient on hand, and the fresh mint at the store looked shameful for spending more than $3 on (where art thou, spring/farmers’ market?), so I didn’t follow the recipe straight-on, but I think I was close enough to count.
The flavor of this recipe is top-notch — the Indian spices give it a great aroma and “kick,” although it’s really not remotely as hot and spicy as many Indian dishes, while the yogurt and lemon juice cools it down a bit. And, of course, there’s fresh cilantro, so if you like that, it’s awesome. For some textural contrast, I put it on a bed of fresh romaine lettuce a few times and that seemed to amp it up a bit, but that’s definitely not necessary to enjoy this super-easy dish.
Indian-Spiced Chickpea Salad with Yogurt and Herbs
From Food and Wine magazine.
Serves 6 (or about 3-4 lunch portions)
Ingredients
- Two 15-ounce cans chickpeas—rinsed, drained and patted dry
- 2 Tbsp. peanut oil (I used canola — I try not to keep too many types of oil on hand for fear of spoilage)
- 1 teaspoon mustard seeds
- 3/4 teaspoon cumin seeds (I thought I had these, but I did not, so I add powdered cumin later in the recipe than the seeds are called for)
- 3/4 teaspoon fennel seeds
- 1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper
- 3/4 cup plain whole-milk yogurt
- 1 1/2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
- 2 scallions, thinly sliced (just plum forgot about this — this recipe is almost easy enough to do from memory)
- 1/4 cup chopped cilantro
- 1/4 cup chopped mint (omitted because I’m not buying wilted mint)
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt
Directions
Pour the chickpeas into a large bowl. In a small skillet, heat the peanut oil until shimmering. Add the mustard seeds, partially cover the skillet and cook over moderately high heat until the mustard seeds stop popping, about 1 minute (this is super fun, by the by). Add the cumin and fennel seeds and the crushed red pepper and cook until the mixture is fragrant, about 30 seconds. Pour the hot oil and spices over the chickpeas. Stir in the yogurt, lemon juice, sliced scallions, chopped cilantro and mint and salt. Serve the chickpea salad at room temperature.
Ta da! Told you that was easy.
